Tim Grobaty: Ancestor of new Long Beach fire chief was a man worth knowing

SQUIRE DuREE: Most of us don't know an awful lot about our great-great grandfathers. For one thing, we've got eight of them rattling around in the fog of history. No way we can name all eight of our great-great grandfathers. That's how quickly time swallows up the life's work of any of us. Best case, you can name one. Someone who accomplished enough of note to withstand more than a couple of generations of dissolution.

One great-great grandfather who will be hanging around in memory for a few more generations is Squire Franklin DuRee, whose great-great grandson, Mike DuRee, was appointed Long Beach's latest fire chief this month.

There's no singular accomplishment of Squire DuRee that would have prevented the erosion of his family's memory over time, but his body of work makes him one of Long Beach's most important, and perhaps wackiest, characters.

Where to begin? His involvement in getting Calbraith Perry Rodgers to wrap up his historic cross-country flight in Long Beach?

His work, along with that of another early city legend, Dutch Miller, in making Long Beach the first ocean resort city in the nation to equip its lifeguards with rescue boats?

Handing out thousands of pieces of Easter and Halloween candy every year?

Infamously staging an Empire Day celebration-turned-disaster?

Presiding over the downtown Municipal Market, the forerunner of today's farmers markets?

That last bit was our favorite. In 1913, the Woman's City Club of Long Beach convinced the City Council that an outdoor grocery and produce mart would bring revenue to the city. The council agreed and the market opened on Wednesdays and Saturdays on the west side of Pacific Avenue from Ocean Boulevard to Broadway, later expanding to include the south side of Broadway between Pacific and Cedar avenues, forming an L around Lincoln Park.

DuRee quickly aligned himself with the market, appointing himself volunteer Market Master and going so far as fashioning a uniform for himself - gray-and-black striped pants, a light gray jacket and a cap bearing the initials MM on the front.

He promoted the market relentlessly, staging various entertainments, including arranging for famed local aviator Earl Daugherty and another pilot, Marguerite Tincher, to perform noisy and dangerous loops and other aerobatics over the crowd of shoppers while dumping hundreds of postcards over the park.

DuRee stumbled upon Long Beach while bringing his family to Pasadena from San Diego in 1909. Born in Indiana in 1864, he bounced around the west, including a few years in Colorado, New Hampshire and Missouri before coming to California and, en route to Pasadena, becoming mesmerized by Long Beach's then-new Pike and the Walk of a Thousand Lights.

His first venture was a modest one, opening a grocery store at American Avenue (now Long Beach Boulevard) and Broadway. But he quickly got into the entertainment, opening the Bijou Theater, showing two-reeler Westerns.

Then, DuRee was off and running, promoting the city at every turn. He threw a baby contest at Easter, a twins convention, doll parades, kite festivals. Look at him cross-eyed and he would light up a fireworks display over the beach.

His effectiveness as a promoter backfired horribly on March 24, 1913. DuRee had discovered that the day was being celebrated in England as Empire Day, and decided to throw a bash in the auditorium on the double-decked Pine Avenue Pier.

The day was marked by martial music performed by the Municipal Band, and hundreds of enthusiastic anglophiles began stomping in time as they waited for the doors to open. Suddenly, in just a couple of seconds, the upper deck of the pier collapsed and the throng fell onto another crowd beneath them. Sixty revelers were killed and hundreds more were injured in what remains the second-biggest disaster in Long Beach history, behind the 1933 earthquake.

Undaunted, DuRee carried on in his service to the city's success in those formative years of the town.

He increased the popularity of the city's amusement zone as president of the Pike Association and general manager of the Long Beach Amusement League.

In the 1920s, DuRee was appointed director of the Long Beach Recreation Department, during which time he was key to the city's acquisition and development of some of the town's biggest parks, including Recreation, Houghton and Silverado.

It is, perhaps, particularly notable that DuRee was never a firefighter. It's what separates him from his son, his grandson, his great-grandson and his great-great grandson.

Squire's son Allen (A.C.) joined the fire department in 1918 and served as chief from 1933 to 1945. Allen's son Stanley joined the department in 1947 and rose to the rank of captain. Stanley's son Rick put in 31 years before retiring as deputy chief, and Rick's son Mike joined the fire department in 1994.

Squire died at 81 in 1945, after having jump-started the city in a way no other man could have. His son Allen told the Press-Telegram at the time of his father's death, "He would have lived to 100 if he had coddled himself, but that just wasn't his way."